TVA's Kingston plant will generate new energy by 2027, leaving coal and smokestacks behind
The Tennessee Valley Authority will retire the Kingston Fossil Plant – once the largest coal-fired power plant in the world and the site of a major coal ash disaster – and replace it with a cleaner energy mix anchored by a 1,500-megawatt natural gas plant by 2027.
TVA CEO and President Jeff Lyash made the decision on April 2 and said in a release that closing Kingston "is not an easy decision, but it's the right thing to do for our energy security going forward."
A workhorse of TVA's system and a major employer in Roane County since 1955, the plant's twin 1,000-foot smokestacks stand just off Interstate 40 as it crosses the Clinch River. At its peak, it burned 14,000 tons of coal a day to produce enough power for 818,000 homes. It still supplies power, especially for the Knoxville region.
Replacing coal plants with gas plants is now a familiar process for TVA, the nation's largest public power provider whose coal-fired plants are among the oldest in the nation.
Since 2012, the federal utility has closed seven coal plants and replaced most of the lost electricity generation with natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits between 50% and 60% less carbon pollution than coal.
At the Kingston site, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, the gas plant will be joined by 100 megawatts of grid-level battery storage and 3 to 4 megawatts of solar generation in a first-of-its-kind complex for TVA.
Eventually, the towering and aging stacks will have to come down and the silhouette of Kingston will change dramatically.
TVA published its final environmental impact statement on Feb. 16, in which the utility's planners said they preferred the gas plant over a collection of solar and battery storage sites across its system, an option championed by environmental groups.
TVA still leans on its four remaining coal plants for 13% of its electricity production, though it plans to close its last coal plant by 2035. It generates over half of its power from carbon-free sources like nuclear and hydroelectric dams. Gas accounts for 22% of its electricity production, according to TVA's latest annual report.
The utility also is installing more solar panels to meet its goal of adding 10,000 megawatts of solar power by 2035, enough to power millions of homes. Solar panels at the Kingston site are a small step toward that goal.
The new complex at Kingston will be something like a microcosm of the diversity of TVA's system, COO Don Moul told Knox News.
"Operationally, we love having diversity, not only on the system, but at a site as well, so we think this is something we're going to continue to develop in the future," Moul said. "Three to four megawatts is a start. We are continuing to evaluate if there are ways that we can expand that."
TVA is working on a 100-megawatt solar facility that would be built over a sealed off coal ash heap at its Shawnee plant in Kentucky. If the agency gets approval from federal regulators, it could repeat the project at other sites. The utility operates or has committed to more than 3,000 megawatts of solar power.
Other closed TVA coal plants have gotten more creative second lives: one is home to a $600 million Google data center and another soon could be home to pioneering nuclear fusion research. TVA plans to replace a unit of its Cumberland coal plant with a gas plant by 2026.
Kingston plant legacy shadowed by massive coal ash spill
The Kingston plant was finished in 1955 largely to provide power for the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex, which were ramping up development of nuclear weapons and nuclear science at the beginning of the Cold War. For more than a decade, it was the largest plant of its kind in the world.
That legacy was damaged when more than one billion gallons of coal ash, the chemical cocktail produced from burning coal, spilled over the surrounding community after a dike failed on Dec. 22, 2008. The spill is one of the largest industrial accidents in U.S. history.
The spill's harm far outlasted the event itself, as TVA's cleanup contractor Jacobs Solutions failed to properly protect workers from the coal ash and allegedly misled workers about the dangerous brew of heavy metals and carcinogens. Several hundred workers have gotten sick and many have died in the years since.
Cleanup workers and their families reached a confidential settlement last year, avoiding a federal trial. TVA was not a party in the decade-long lawsuits.
TVA executives have not commented publicly about the spill in nearly a decade, though Lyash met with coal ash cleanup workers and their families in 2019. Those affected by the hazardous cleanup still mark the anniversary each year and plan to erect a historical marker visible from the interstate.
The utility now stores all its coal ash in a dry form rather than in ponds contained by dikes. In 2022, it sold 82% of its coal ash to companies that recycle it into wallboard and cement.
"We do believe that TVA has put its best foot forward to mitigate the effects of the coal ash spill, and to set Roane County and Kingston up for success," Wade Creswell, county executive for Roane County, told Knox News.
"If you go visit the area, there's new parks, there's new infrastructure, and I think moving toward an energy complex ... is the next step in overcoming that negative piece of the legacy."
Creswell's initial concerns about the retirement of the Kingston coal plant had to do with workforce reductions: gas plants require fewer employees than coal plants. When he considers Roane County's future with TVA, he said he is no longer concerned.
The county could be home to the nation's first small modular nuclear reactors at TVA's Clinch River Site, just a few miles east of the Kingston plant.
If the first advanced reactors come online in the early 2030s, Roane County would become perhaps the most important in TVA's system. The county has more than 56,000 residents and is growing at a rate of 1.5% to 2% every year.
"We've got to be able to accommodate growth in our area so we're gonna support as much power generation as we possibly can," Creswell said.
Just as the Kingston coal plant was built to secure nuclear power, its replacement could be a cleaner bridge to a carbon-free future powered by TVA's small modular reactors, if they prove to be financially viable.
Are the Kingston smokestacks coming down?
One thing is certain: The 800-acre Kingston site will look a lot different in 2027 and beyond, as the existing coal plant is decommissioned and eventually demolished.
TVA has not finished final plans for the demolition of the plant, COO Don Moul said. The utility will look at whether they can use parts of the coal plant for synchronous condensers, which generate or absorb power in real time to help keep the grid stable.
Regardless of how the plant's parts might be reused, its towering smokestacks will come down eventually to be replaced by much shorter gas stacks.
"Over time, legacy stacks like that will degrade when exposed to the weather and the elements, so from a safety standpoint, we would eventually take those down," Moul said. "You'll have a much lower profile on the new energy complex."
One group of people who ask TVA tough questions about the reliability of its system are the managers of the 153 local power companies who buy its electricity. Candace Vannasdale, general manager of the Harriman Utilities Board, is one of those managers in Roane County.
Vannasdale said she is confident that the new energy complex of gas, storage and solar at the Kingston site is the right move for TVA. She said the Roane County community had several changes to meet with TVA leaders and provide feedback on the plans for Kingston. The Harriman Utilities Board included flyers about TVA public participation along with monthly utility bills.
"Like it or not, our society depends on power that is reliable and affordable," Vannasdale told Knox News in an email. "We also want a power grid that is resilient to major events and environmentally responsible. The disagreement seems to be which way to prioritize these."
As a utility leader in Roane County, Vannasdale knows that the Kingston plant has a complicated legacy. Still, the coal plant will be missed, not least for the imposing height of its old stacks.
"My 10-year-old son, for example, enjoys seeing them when we are driving by, but he is also excited to see them be imploded once it’s time to decommission the plant," Vannasdale said. "I think that will be a very bittersweet day, especially for the folks that worked on the site for most of their lives."
Kingston gas plant will be fed by new pipeline
The Kingston gas plant will be finished before the coal plant fully retires by the end of 2027. It will consist of one combined cycle combustion turbine plant paired with 16 dual-fuel aeroderivative combustion turbines. Aeroderivative turbines, known as "aeros," start up fast and work like jet engines – sucking in air, compressing it and mixing it with fuel.
Burning two fuels in the gas plant could be key to reducing the plant's emissions over time. In its environmental impact statement, TVA planners said the plant would be capable of 5% co-firing with carbon-free hydrogen fuel, and could reach 30% co-firing soon after the agency secures a steady source of hydrogen fuel.
The gas plant likely will be fed by a new 122-mile gas pipeline built across eight Middle and East Tennessee counties by pipeline operator Enbridge. The Ridgeline project will expand Enbridge’s existing East Tennessee Natural Gas system.
In 2021, TVA signed a "precedent agreement" with Enbridge to supply fuel for the proposed Kingston gas plant. Though the contract required a substantial investment from TVA, COO Don Moul said TVA is not "overcommitted" to the pipeline if it does not get approved. The pipeline has to be approved through a separate regulatory process.
TVA's decision making process falls under scrutiny
An expanded pipeline is one of many concerns environmental groups have about plans for the Kingston gas plant.
The other alternative examined by TVA was a collection of solar and storage sites across its system. TVA planners rejected that option, saying it would be a less efficient use of land – it would require some 10,950 acres – and that solar energy and batteries are not reliable enough when the sun isn't shining.
TVA's experts have expressed concern that solar panels and batteries would not deliver when electricity demand spikes in the Tennessee Valley, especially on winter mornings before the sun rises, like on Jan. 17, 2024, when TVA's plants powered through the utility's highest energy demand ever.
In the final decision on the Kingston plant, TVA planners said the solar and battery option would save the utility $417 million in costs related to greenhouse gas emissions in the long run, but would cost $1 billion more to build, including extensive transmission updates.
Bryan Jacob, solar program director at the Knoxville-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said TVA relied on old data to make its case against solar. Supply chain disruptions in the solar panel market in 2022 have largely cleared up, making solar a better bet, he said.
One benefit of solar power, in addition to relatively cheap electricity production, is its insulation from spikes in the fuel supply chain. Fossil fuels can suddenly become more expensive, but sunshine is always the same price: free.
"The more any utility relies on a particular fuel, it becomes less diverse. By increasing its reliance on fossil gas in this case, it is going to leave the customers more exposed to that price volatility," Jacob said. "Solar in particular is a zero fuel resource. Yes, there are capital costs for the initial construction, but then there's very little ongoing maintenance costs and there's zero fuel costs."
Other groups have cited concerns that critical information was left out of the final environmental impact statement on the Kingston plant.
In a letter to the TVA Board of Directors on March 19, the Nashville-based Southern Environmental Law Center said TVA planners had left out information about how federal incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act could have helped the utility build more solar and why it didn't take this opportunity to help reach its goal of 10,000 megawatts of solar power by 2035.
The letter cited a study commissioned by the center that found the solar and storage option could save TVA customers up to $1.35 billion by 2048.
The Southern Environmental Law Center had been operating under the assumption that the TVA board would need to approve the final decision about Kingston's future. The only approval needed was Lyash's signature.
TVA's board took back the power to make the final decision on the Kingston plant in May 2023, after it had been temporarily given to Lyash when several board seats were empty. But at its very next meeting, the board approved a measure in TVA's annual budget that effectively returned that power to Lyash.
Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the flip-flop had been agreed upon outside of public view.
“We’re talking about billions of ratepayer dollars and decades of additional pollution," Garcia said in a statement to Knox News. "The TVA Board has plenary power and should be exercising it to ensure that TVA makes decisions that are consistent with TVA’s legal obligations and are in the best interest of families throughout the Tennessee Valley. Instead, they’re playing hot potato with their important responsibilities.”
Scott Brooks, a TVA spokesperson, said the decision at the August 2023 board meeting was consistent with the board's bylaws and resolutions, which are available to the public online and through streamed quarterly meetings.
EPA calls Kingston planning document 'inadequate'
TVA's planning processes are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which went into law in 1970, the same year that the federal Environmental Protection Agency was created. NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impact of their projects. The EPA reviews the resulting statements.
In a letter sent to TVA on March 25, Jeaneanne Gettle, acting regional administrator for the EPA's Southeast region, called the final environmental impact statement for Kingston "inadequate" and requested the utility provide a supplemental statement.
Gettle said TVA did not take the EPA's feedback on its draft into account. She wrote that TVA evaluated a "limited range of alternatives" to a gas plant, failed to show how federal incentives would affect the cost of each option, failed to show how future fossil fuel regulations could make a gas plant more expensive and did not disclose its methodology for calculating emissions.
TVA did not explain why 2027 is the year Kingston must be retired, Gettle said, but it did say the solar and storage option could not work since it would not be installed in time. She also said the planning document included an "incomplete assessment of impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns."
TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks told Knox News that the utility is "considering those comments and will address them as appropriate" as it continues to plan for the future of the Kingston site.
The utility is currently working on its long-term plan to meet energy demand, which it recently delayed to allow for more analysis and stakeholder input.
Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email [email protected].
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: TVA to replace Kingston Tennessee coal plant with natural gas by 2027